How to implement corporate entrepreneurship: the case of Rocket Internet

Details

Supervisors

Gailly, Benoît

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

This paper’s purpose is to identify the key success factors and drivers leading to the creation of new ventures by corporations and verify their applicability in the Internet based company Rocket Internet. The first part of this paper is theoretical and starts by a definition of the concepts that will be discussed. The words defined are first of all entrepreneurship and then we will move to corporate entrepreneurship with a review of the concepts found in the literature and their implications. The subjects of corporate entrepreneurship to foster innovation, strategic renewal or corporate venturing are as well described. The illustrative example of the company 3M is depicted in order to highlight the process. Finally, a section about managerial entrepreneurs describes how these individuals have to cope with the difficulties of acting as both a manager and an entrepreneur. The next section of the theoretical part depicts the reason why a firm would want to engage in corporate entrepreneurship. The section first describes how firms can do it for either learning or leveraging reasons, then lists the triggers identified in the literature and finally the internal drivers to new business development. The last section highlights the key success factors leading to the development of new ventures. The first point is a description of what is a successful new venture, then depicts the internal factors (in three sections, antecedents, support during the process and goals to strive toward) and then the external ones linked to with the environment. Some barriers observed in the literature are described before jumping to the implications for top managers and middle managers. The second part of this paper is practical and analyses the case of Rocket Internet, a company starting dozens of new Internet ventures each year based on a copycat strategy. These new businesses are developed internally, using Rocket’s capabilities. The first part is a broad industry analysis, followed by a company description in order to understand it. Then there is a depiction of the key success factors applicable to the case of Rocket Internet and how the company puts them into place. Then we describe some downsides of Rocket’s strategy and recommendations such as the implementation of a bottom-up approach to venture development. Finally the conclusion draws the implication of this research, its contribution to the literature and some critics and limitations of this research paper.